Not applicable.
Not applicable.
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to systems that obtain and monitor data that varies. More particularly, the present invention relates to a system that associates textual information with varying data based upon the current data values. Still more particularly, the preferred embodiment of the present invention relates to an automated system for obtaining current information of a security, and based upon that information, provides textual information that describes the performance of the security.
2. Background of the Invention
Most industrialized countries have one or more stock exchanges where stocks, bonds and other securities can be publicly traded. In the United States, there are several such stock exchanges, including the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), the American Stock Exchange, and the NASDAQ Exchange.
The buying and selling of stocks in these various exchanges is big business. In 1997 alone, the New York Stock Exchange reported that over 133 billion shares of stock was traded, worth an estimated $5.8 trillion. Over 3,000 companies are listed on the New York Stock Exchange, with a market capitalization now well in excess of $11 trillion.
With the advent of the Internet, the buying and selling of stocks on-line has become increasingly popular. Consumers also use the Internet as a convenient vehicle to obtain information regarding publicly traded companies when deciding whether to buy or sell a particular stock. A number of companies, such as the assignee of the present invention, have specialized in providing information regarding stocks and other financial securities. In addition to providing the current price of a given security, companies such as the assignee also provide a great deal of other data, including high and low prices, price/sales ratios, sales volume, charts showing change in stock prices, and much, much more. The assignee of this invention operates a website called xe2x80x9cWall Street City,xe2x80x9d that can be found at http://www.wallstreetcity.com/wsc. This website provides over 250 different parameters (or variables) relative to a single stock.
An inexperienced investor usually is unable to make much sense of this large mass of technical financial data and thus is at a loss how to make investment decisions (whether to buy a particular stock, how many shares to buy, when to sell, etc.) based upon this financial data. To make sense of this data, the inexperienced investor usually is forced to consult an expert financial analyst. The analyst reviews the financial data regarding one or more stocks in which the investor is interested and manually synthesizes the data into a form that is useful to the investor. That form typically includes a narrative description summarizing some of the more pertinent pieces of data to assist the investor in evaluating the information and making informed investment decisions. Thus, financial analysts essentially xe2x80x9ctranslatexe2x80x9d technical financial data into xe2x80x9cEnglishxe2x80x9d that lay investors can understand and use.
Many investors, however, do not have the resources to pay an experienced financial analyst to provide this service. Further, the financial analyst must manually generate a report unique to each investor based on the stocks in which the investor is interested. This process takes considerable time and thus, even if all potential investors had the resources to hire expert analysts, the sheer number of potential investors and potential stocks in which to invest would prevent analysts from satisfying all requests for investment analysis when needed.
It would be desirable to develop an automated or semi-automated system capable of providing up-to-date, customized descriptions of changing market conditions in a form non-financial experts can easily understand. It would also be desirable if the descriptive narrative could comment on various parameters the investor selects, but could comment on additional parameters to enhance the information provided to the investor.
Despite the apparent advantages such a system would offer, to date no such system has been made available that addresses these concerns or limitations.
Accordingly, there is provided herein an interpretive text system implemented in a host computer system. The host computer system, which may include multiple computers networked or otherwise coupled together, includes one or more processors, memory, a fixed disk storage device and an interface to a communication link. The communications link may be any one of a variety of suitable communications links, such as the Internet, and provides a communication medium by which users can access the host computer from user computers at remote locations. The host computer includes interpretive text logic, which preferably is implemented in software running on the processor(s), that automatically generates a textual explanation of a set of variable data in response to user input. For example, the user may wish to see an explanation of a set of financial technical data regarding a particular security. The interpretive text logic automatically customizes a textual explanation for that particular security and provides the textual explanation to the user.
In the context of financial securities, the interpretive text logic examines a set of variable data for the particular security specified by the user. The set of variable data reflects the most recently updated state of the specified security. The interpretive text logic compares the current values for the variable data to predetermined ranges for such data and selects character strings stored in a file on the fixed disk based on how the current values compare to the predetermined ranges. In accordance with the preferred embodiment, the predetermined ranges for the data are further defined in terms of a plurality of discrete degrees (e.g., +3, +2, +1, 0, xe2x88x921, xe2x88x922, xe2x88x923). A +3 degree, for example, may refer to a range of values of a particular degree of 98-100. Comparison of the current variable data is thus made by determining in which range of values the current data falls and assigning the associated degree to the variable data.
Once the degrees are assigned to the variable data, the processor selects character strings from a file stored on the fixed disk storage device associated with the various degrees. The character strings then are sorted in a suitable order and, if desired, certain character strings are eliminated as redundant or otherwise undesirable.